Monday, April 21, 2014

I have a theory about why the federal government invests so much time in promoting stupid solutions to problems that don't exist. Take the cries for the banning of firearms because there are "more and more" school shootings. This is despite the fact that, statisticaly, millions more men,, women and children die in car accidents, diving into shallow swimning pools, stay home for the hurricane party, or have a cement block dropped on their car from an overpass. And in fact, violence against school children isn't increasing. Although the news media is indeed paying more attention to it.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

My immediate family, or those I live nearby, anyway, are coping
with a particularly voracious stomach flu bug, and I'm not feeling all that
well myself, so this Easter the cockatiels and I are staying home...avoiding
the Easter goodies, doing some light spring cleaning, and participating in a
ritual I've enjoyed since my senior year on high schillings: Playing Beethoven's Symphony #6
and enjoying the spring it portends. It's a good day for it too; sunshine
streaming in, probably teasing us mercifully before the next big polar vortex
with its 10 inches of snow and the thousands of Michigan parents being treated
for a new illness: snow day fatigue.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Those are my words, those last two, and sympathy distortion is
something the fan of FX's "The Americans" must learn to live with.
Or stop watching it.

The KGB family brings brownies for the FBI agent under whose nose they reside

If you don't watch much TV, then you, like I before a friend told
me about it, may not know about this show. It's a little difficult to explain
unless you are a Cold War nerd like myself, but basically, the
"stars" are a couple (marriage arranged by the KGB) from the Soviet
Union, their accents somehow magically erased, living in a cushy split level in
1980s Washington, DC, next door to a clueless FBI agent; amusing themselves with kidnapping, forced repatriation
of the odd Russian intelligentsia, a fake marriage (the husband's), meeting cool people and killing them, and by magically keeping their kids from knowing they are KGB spies from the Soviet Union (don't these kids wonder why they never meet their grandmas?) While
all this is going on, the clueless FBI agent not only misses the KGB agents
under his nose, but has fallen desperately in love with the woman he believes
is his KGB informant, but who used him to get her way back into the good with
her "Soviet ambassador" boss, and who may have been in love with him,
but is now sleeping with another sort of free-agent agent who is extorting FBI
information from the FBI agent by threatening the life of his KGB
"informant"/triple agent informant/lover. All in the context of
wives, children, and innocent bystanders who are flicked away like so much
acceptable collateral damage.

Friday, April 11, 2014

The reason for the tax dirge:

The tax dirge is perfect music
for seeking lost bits of paper, Googling tax code minutiae (and isn’t it all
minutiae?)…and for holding your breath until your accountant calls and says
you're getting a refund, or a bigger refund than expected....or until you enter
all the numbers into Turbo Tax and the amount "overpaid" comes up
positive. On the other hand, it's good music to drown your sorrows when you see there is no way in H-E Double toothpicks you're getting a refund...in fact, you may have to sell your house to pay your bill!!

To be
honest, many times the songs in the annual playlist known as the Tax Dirge
aren't evocative of those feelings viz their music or lyrics; many times the
title just, well, fits.

As usual, the Dirge features songs of all or most song types. This one includes reggae, hip-hop, opera, 70s punk, folk and country. And 2014 sees the debut of Mr. Marshall Mathers on the Dirge with not 1 but 2 selections from "The Eminem Show".

We end as
usual with the Mother of All Tax Dirge Songs, "Taxman", written and
performed mostly by George Harrison....the Grumpy Beatle[1]. If you're singing
along to the finale this year, and wondering what to put in place of the descant, "Uh-uh, Mr. Wilson; Uh-uh, Mr. Heath", then
"Uh-uh, Mr. Boehner, Uh-uh, Mr. O" works pretty good. Unless
you're Canadian, in which case you have a couple of weeks to figure out how
to fit Messrs. Harper and Mulcair in the song in a rhythmic and clever way, eh.